The higher law of the Spirit & the mosaic law of Old Testament

New Testament christians dont live any longer under the mosaic law but under the spiritual law of the Holy Spirit which is higher and the under new covenant which is much more glorious then the old covenant. We live under grace and not under law. The fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace....self control agaist such there is no law. That does not mean that we ignore or abolish the law but that we fulfill it by living and walking in the Spirit.

Paul in romans 7 describes the desperate condition of a man living under the heavy burden of mosaic law, that poor person is legalistic and bound by sin.In romans chapter 8 Paul describes the man who is set free from the burden law and is set free by the law of the Spirit which is freedom. The man in chap 8 is free and happy but the man in chap 7 is bound and miserable.

The moral law of the old testament cant justify us, it will only make us aware of our sin and the need for a Saviour. Christians are commanded to observe all the commandments of God in the New Testament and the only way to fulfill them is thru Spirit of Christ empowering us to obey God.

Paul before his conversion observed all the mosaic law and after his conversion he was one of the first from apostles to distinguish very clearly from the gosple of grace from the mosaic law and he was even missunderstood from the jewish christians.

We dont abolish the moral lwa of OT we fulfill it by living under the spiritual law of the Spirit, and the sermon on the mount can only be observed by as we obey God under the dominion of his grace.

Blessings.
Redi

I think many christians fall in the trap of adding to the gosple of grace the works of self-rightiousness. We begin in the Spirit and end up in the flesh, forgetting that the work required of us is to believe the gosple of grace.Many of us are stuck in romans 7 experience and endeavor to sanctify ourselves by obeying the moral law. At least this is my experiece right now.

Anyone want to share their experience of how they escaped from the legalistic experince of romans7 to spiritual freedom of romans8. After all what is personal revival but the experience in our daily life of Romans8. I know that im save by faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross,i dont doubt my salvation but im self examining myself to make sure that i build on a firm foundation which is Christ and not the on the moral law of the old covenant.

The old saints use to talk about the crises experience of sanctification, u dont need a crises experince if u had a daily steady walk with the Lord or if you never fell from the first love for Jesus or backslid but for sure many of us need a personal spiritual awakening and Spirit illumination to realize the need for personal sanctification and spiritual freedom is a free gift of grace appropriated by faith in the Jesus Christ.

I need the power of the gosple, the freedom of the Spirit, the joy of my salvation, the wistness of the Spirit, the perfect love of God, the fire of the Spirit. May God grant the desires of our hearts according to his will.

The difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law is that the letter relates to the outward action; the spirit relates to the motive or intention of the heart and from which the act should proceed.

The spirit of the law requires impartial goodwill or benevolence, and is all expressed in one word--love. The letter of the law requires strict adherence to every precept, it is all expressed in one word--obey.

An example, the letter of the law says, "Do not commit murder!" but the spirit of the law says, ''anyone who is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable to Judgment.'' (Matthew 5:21-22)
The spirit requires that certain conditions to be examined in their proper place.

The letter of the law is unyielding and sentences “guilty” all violators of its precepts, without regard to the purpose of the violation.
Just as the speed limit is 55 mph and one exceeds the limit, the law says, ''guilty''. The spirit of the law, on the other hand, sees the purpose of the excess speed for an emergency and says, ''keep speeding until purpose is met.
Furthermore, when speeding for the purpose of an emergency, the spirit of the law is not broken, but fulfilled.

elected wrote:

Many of us are stuck in romans 7 experience and endeavor to sanctify ourselves by obeying the moral law. At least this is my experiece right now.

The old saints use to talk about the crises experience of sanctification

The crisis experience that you say we don't need, but yet you confess that you are living in Romans 7 in need of something deeper.

Look at Job if you want to see a crisis experience. You'll see at the start of the book of Job 1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. Job 1:1.

Job although upright, perfect, feared God and turned from evil was not pure in heart.

God knew what he was doing when he let Satan test Job and the Mother of all crisis experiences started for him.

Know before I continue lets tie up Holiness, sanctifcation and being Pure in Heart.

Pure in heart and Holiness is easy.

Mat 5:8 8Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Heb 12:14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord

Purity and Holiness are the same thing.

The word "holiness" is hageeasmos in Greek (with an alternate of hageeosoonay). Both the Greek and Hebrew languages have a "word family" for the word holiness. In Greek, the word hageeos means a holy person, or a saint. The word haggeeadzo means to purify, make holy, or sanctify. The word hageeasmos means holiness or sanctification.

Job 42:5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.

Here we see Job making a confession that know my eyes see you. This lets us know that God did a work in Jobs heart of purification as he declares that he can see God.

The crisis experince is not about being backsliden or the likes, it's about knowing that inside your not pure and that you need God to deal with what is inside of you so you can be free from the bondage of sin.

As you know many try there hardest to fulfill the law after coming to God to try and be good Christains. We supress the bad temper, irritability, pride, jealousy, backbiting, unlove, ANXIETY thats in us and cover it up and try to show the fruit of the spirit. It's all white wash thats not freedom from the above mentioned sin thats deception.

So long as you go to the world for your pleasures, and so long as you fall into the usual sins of respectable people, THE MORE YOU ATTEMPT FOR CHRIST the more the DEVIL IS PLEASED. He simply revels in seeing defeated, worldly Christians desperately busy for Christ.

Where am I at right know in my walk with God I am right in the middle of the crisis experience. God has shown me the condition of my heart, he has shown me the monster that lives in me called sin. The monster that is so wrapped up in your personality that you think its you.

I am studying, learning, diving into the teachings of the old saints, I find them encouraging lifting my spirit as I see that I am not the first to have experinced this, but I also rejoice that one day God in his mercy will deliver this wretched man from what is inside him and take hope that God has a purpose at the end of this for what I am going through.

Hope that helps and encourages you.

Logic wrote:

The spirit of the law requires impartial goodwill or benevolence, and is all expressed in one word--love. The letter of the law requires strict adherence to every precept, it is all expressed in one word--obey.

Thank u for your input bro, God is love and out of love for him we obey him as we are enabled by the Spirit. The longer we live as christians the more we realize that without Christ we cant do anything.There is this tension inside of us created from the clash of two diffrent "natures" of the spirit and the flesh that draws us in opposite directions. The law of sin & death operating in the flesh and the law of the Spirit oflife operating in the spirit.

Sometimes we go thru our spiritual desert and often because of our foolishness we prolong our wandering in the wilderness at least this is my experience. The land of promise (canaan) flowing with milk and honey is the place where God wants us to dwell but we (or I at least) need to kill first those "giants inside us" that stand on the way to enjoying the promises of God.

I know what it means to struggle with indweling sin, once u overcome those sins that are more obvious or gross. Often we find ouselves in a "miry clay" struggling to get out of it by works of self rightousness. U confess this sin and that sin, u amend your life for better and still u figure out that the law of sin and death is operating in you flesh.

Not to make things look pretty gloomy, i know that the Holy Spirit is in me but im not absolutely surrendered to him, dying to self not an easy thing when it comes to experience and often there is a gradual death to self. The more we live for Christ the more we die to ourselves.

I want to claim this scripture by faith and encourage my bro & sis and myself too, who desire and long for a deeper walk with God

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. [1] 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you [2] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

The Spirit set us free when we believed Jesus as our Lord & Saviour and he still sets us free from the lwa of sin and death.

Praise God for freedom in the Spirit. We were meant to fly high like eagles.

CONCERNING DELIVERANCE FROM SINNING

by C. H. Spurgeon

IN THIS PLACE I would say a plain word or two to those who understand the method of justification by faith which is in Christ Jesus, but whose trouble is that they cannot cease from sin. We can never be happy, restful, or spiritually healthy till we become holy. We must be rid of sin; but how is the riddance to be wrought? This is the life-or-death question of many. The old nature is very strong, and they have tried to curb and tame it; but it will not be subdued, and they find themselves, though anxious to be better, if anything growing worse than before. The heart is so hard, the will is so obstinate, the passions are so furious, the thoughts are so volatile, the imagination is so ungovernable, the desires are so wild, that the man feels that he has a den of wild beasts within him, which will eat him up sooner than be ruled by him. We may say of our fallen nature what the Lord said to Job concerning Leviathan: "Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?" A man might as well hope to hold the north wind in the hollow of his hand as expect to control by his own strength those boisterous powers which dwell within his fallen nature. This is a greater feat than any of the fabled labors of Hercules: God is wanted here.

"I could believe that Jesus would forgive sin," says one, "but then my trouble is that I sin again, and that I feel such awful tendencies to evil within me. As surely as a stone, if it be flung up into the air, soon comes down again to the ground, so do I, though I am sent up to heaven by earnest preaching, return again to my insensible state. Alas ! I am easily fascinated with the basilisk eyes of sin, and am thus held as under a spell, so that I cannot escape from my own folly."

Dear friend, salvation would be a sadly incomplete affair if it did not deal with this part of our ruined estate. We want to be purified as well as pardoned. Justification without sanctification would not be salvation at all. It would call the leper clean, and leave him to die of his disease; if would forgive the rebellion and allow the rebel to remain an enemy to his king. It would remove the consequences but overlook the cause, and this would leave an endless and hopeless task before us. It would stop the stream for a time, but leave an open fountain of defilement, which would sooner or later break forth with increased power. Remember that the Lord Jesus came to take away sin in three ways; He came to remove the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and, at last, the presence of sin. At once you may reach to the second part—the power of sin may immediately be broken; and so you will be on the road to the third, namely, the removal of the presence of sin. "We know that he was manifested to take away our sins."

The angel said of our Lord, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." Our Lord Jesus came to destroy in us the works of the devil. That which was said at our Lord's birth was also declared in His death; for when the soldier pierced His side forthwith came there out blood and water, to set forth the double cure by which we are delivered from the guilt and the defilement of sin.

If, however, you are troubled about the power of sin, and about the tendencies of your nature, as you well may be, here is a promise for you. Have faith in it, for it stands in that covenant of grace which is ordered in all things and sure. God, who cannot lie, has said in Ezekiel 36:26:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

You see, it is all "I will," and "I will." "I will give," and "I will take away." This is the royal style of the King of kings, who is able to accomplish all His will. No word of His shall ever fall to the ground.

murrcolr wrote:

Where am I at right know in my walk with God I am right in the middle of the crisis experience. God has shown me the condition of my heart, he has shown me the monster that lives in me called sin. The monster that is so wrapped up in your personality that you think its you.

Thanks for sharing your testimony, we need a vision of the holines of God. Like Isaiah when he had a vision of the holiness of God said, "woe is me for i am a man of unclean lips", it was after he had a deeper knowledge of God, that he had a better knowledge of himself and his sin.

I am studying, learning, diving into the teachings of the old saints, I find them encouraging lifting my spirit as I see that I am not the first to have experinced this, but I also rejoice that one day God in his mercy will deliver this wretched man from what is inside him and take hope that God has a purpose at the end of this for what I am going through.

I am in the same "boat" as you bro, most of my books that i have in my mini library are from authours and christian classics that you can hardly find nowday in our modern christian bookstores. These old saints had found the secret of living a victorious life in Jesus. God has begin a good work in us by his Spirit and he is the One who will acomplish it as we surrender to Him.

I hate sin, its power and its presence, im saved from the consequences and from the penalty of sin but the presence of sin i feel in my heart. Praise God that there is a full deliverance and salvation in Jesus. The counter part of sin, is Jesus in our heart and living in and practising the presence will keep us in fellowship with Him.

May we have the Spirit born holy desires for an intemacy with God.

Blessings,
Redi

elected, I can share my own personal experience of how legalism is being dealt with in my own life.

I was always taught that salvation was by grace. Initially trusting in God for something I had no hope of attaining on my own was easy for me, perhaps because at 8 years of age, I had not had time to develop any real legalistic bondage.

The difficulty came, personally, with the crisis experience of sanctification that you are talking about. I was always taught that sanctification was the second definite work in the life of a believer, and that the infilling of the Holy Spirit as described in Acts chapter 2 was the third. Galatians 3:3 says, "Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?" I was trying my best to "make and keep my life pure and clean" so that I would somehow "qualify" to receive the pentecostal baptism. It was a tortuous life of falling to some familiar sin, weeping over it in repentance, doing well for some time, and then repeating the process all over again. I was somehow trying to "be more sanctified" by eliminating sin from my own life. I really did not understand the power of the grace given us through the blood of Christ. I later realized that sanctification is simply the process of saying "yes" to whatever it is the Lord says. It is bringing my life into total agreement with him, and it is a lifelong process.

Titus 2:11-12 shows us that it is the GRACE of God that teaches us how to live a pure and a holy life, and not any act of our own. I came to a place of realization that my sins had been dealt with, and that when I was born again, I BECAME the very righteousness of God because I was now in Christ. God saw me as righteous in the spirit, even when I blew it in the flesh. This realization changed everything. Suddenly, I was not working to earn anything from God. I was receiving what He freely gave. The only labor in my life was to enter into His rest, and to quit trying to depend on myself for anything. I learned, as I have read Watchman Nee teach so well, that my ability to be victorious over sin was a direct result of my being able to allow God's grace to flow in my life to the point that I gave up on ever doing anything in my own power and totally trusted in Him.

James 4:7 says to submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Resistance is powerless unless you have first submitted. How to you submit? You first realize that you are totally powerless against temptation, but that He has given you total victory. You do not trust in your own willpower or ability, but lean entirely on His power. Only then can you successfully resist the devil. I have been walking in a level of victory over sin and ever increasing holiness ever since that time. My whole paradigm has shifted.

As to whether a Christian should also keep the Mosaic or the Levitical law, I would say this. The writer of Hebrews tells us very clearly in chapter 7 that there is a disannulling of the old covenant. It was done away with because it was weak and unprofitable. He uses the fact that Christ was not of the tribe of Levi to drive that point home. If Jesus Christ is made our high priest, then either He is not of God because He breaks the law, being from the wrong tribe, or the Levitical law has been done away with. Paul tells us the Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for all who believe. Some people make a distinction with the 10 commandments given to Moses and say that we need to at least keep them. But, Paul also tells us in 2 Cor. 3:7 that the very ten commandments are a ministration not of life, but of death. God said that He would write his laws on our hearts. The OT law was only a shadow or a representation of God's holy standard. When we awake to the grace of God, that grace will teach us to live holy to a degree that no one ever could by trying to keep the OT law. The change of life that truly comes with an understanding of God's grace toward us will make us willing to give up bubble gum if we perceive that it is coming between Him and us.

Praise the Lord for setting me free from bondage. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage (in context speaking of the bondage to trying to keep the law).